Pharmaceutical Executive Daily: Unpacking IRA-Driven Formulary Pressure

Welcome to Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, your quick briefing on the top news shaping the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.

In today's Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, a pharma dealmaking roundup covers LEO Pharma's acquisition of Tanabe Pharma's dersimelagon, BioMarin's acquisition of Alesta Therapeutics, OmniAb's ion channel collaboration with Eli Lilly, and Chugai's license of AID351 to GSK, Rohit Tripathi of RELEX examines who ultimately absorbs tariff-driven input costs across the pharmaceutical supply chain, and Sybil Mead of Spherix Global Insights speaks on how IRA-driven formulary pressure is spreading well beyond Medicare's negotiated drug list.

A flurry of dealmaking swept the pharma sector this week. LEO Pharma agrees to acquire dersimelagon, an oral MC1R agonist for erythropoietic and X-linked protoporphyria, from Tanabe Pharma for up to $435 million, while BioMarin Pharmaceutical acquires Alesta Therapeutics and its Phase I/IIA hypophosphatasia candidate ALE1 for $275 million upfront plus up to $215 million in milestones. Separately, OmniAb enters an ion channel discovery collaboration with Eli Lilly worth up to $370 million in milestones, and Chugai Pharmaceutical grants GSK an exclusive worldwide license to AID351, an antibody targeting dengue virus.

Rohit Tripathi, vice president of industry strategy, manufacturing and CPG at RELEX, examines who ultimately bears the cost of tariff-driven input price increases across the pharmaceutical supply chain. Tripathi argues that tariff exposure does not disappear simply because a drug's final manufacturing step happens on U.S. soil, since hidden upstream dependencies still leave companies exposed, with thin-margin generics manufacturers facing the greatest pressure to pass costs on to consumers. Rather than reflexive stockpiling, Tripathi contends that targeted resilience planning around product-specific constraints like shelf life and cold chain limitations is the better strategy.

Finally, Sybil Mead, vice president of market access at Spherix Global Insights, speaks on how the Inflation Reduction Act's maximum fair price mechanism is reshaping payer strategy well beyond the ten drugs subject to Medicare negotiation. Mead notes that roughly 50% of payers now benchmark commercial rebates for non-negotiated drugs against Medicare's reference prices, while a shift from flat copays to coinsurance could roughly double patients' cost-sharing exposure over the next several years. She points to diabetes, dermatology, and pulmonology as the therapeutic areas seeing the most formulary disruption.

Thanks for listening to Pharmaceutical Executive Daily. For more updates and in-depth analysis, visit PharmExec.com.